Neighborhood effects in reading aloud: New findings and new challenges for computational models.

Mulatti, Claudio; Reynolds, Michael; Besner, Derek

doi:10.1037/0096-1523.32.4.799

Cited by 45 publications

(81 citation statements)

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“…Reynolds and Besner (2011a) tested this prediction by conducting simulations examining how changes in the response criterion influence the effect of neighborhood density. The standard finding is that the more words that can be created by changing one letter in a letter string, the faster that string is read aloud (Adelman & Brown, 2007;Andrews, 1992;McCann & Besner, 1987;Mulatti, Reynolds, & Besner, 2006;Peereman & Content, 1995Reynolds & Besner, 2004). As was expected, increasing the response criterion in DRC so as to simulate reading aloud pseudohomophones in a pure list context yielded both a larger base word frequency effect and a larger effect of neighborhood density, as compared with lower values used to simulate when pseudohomophones and nonwords are randomly intermixed.…”

Section: A Response Criterion Accountmentioning

confidence: 80%

Reading aloud: New evidence for contextual control over the breadth of lexical activation

Reynolds

Besner

Coltheart³

2011

Mem Cogn

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Computational accounts of reading aloud largely ignore context when stipulating how processing unfolds. One exception to this state of affairs proposes adjusting the breadth of lexical knowledge in such models in response to differing contexts. Three experiments and corresponding simulations, using Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, and Ziegler's (2001) dual-route cascaded model, are reported. This work investigates a determinant of when a pseudohomophone such as brane is affected by the frequency of the word from which it is derived (e.g., the base word frequency of brain) by examining performance under conditions where it is read aloud faster than a nonword control such as frane. Reynolds and Besner's (2005a) lexical breadth account makes the novel prediction that when a pseudohomophone advantage is seen, there will also be a base word frequency effect, provided exception words are also present. This prediction was confirmed. Five other accounts of this pattern of results are considered and found wanting. It is concluded that the lexical breadth account provides the most parsimonious account to date of these and related findings.Keywords Context effects . Lexical processing . Reading aloud . Word recognition . Automaticity . Automatic processing . Pseudohomophones How do skilled readers use lexical knowledge when reading words and orthographically novel letter strings? Recent evidence suggests that a complete answer to this question requires a consideration of context. For instance, list context influences (1) how letter-level processing and lexical-level processing communicate with one another (e.g., Besner & O'Malley, 2009;Besner, O'Malley, & Robidoux, 2010;O'Malley & Besner, 2008) and (2) how semantics affects visual word recognition (e.g., Brown, Stolz, & Besner, 2006;Robidoux, Stolz, & Besner, 2010;Ferguson, Robidoux, & Besner, 2009;Stolz & Neely, 1995). Other work examining print-to-sound translation suggests that context also affects (3) how the breadth of lexical knowledge contributes to the generation of a phonological code. According to Reynolds and Besner (2005a), the breadth of the lexical contribution can vary from narrow, where relatively few entries in the mental lexicon are activated, to broad, where many such entries are activated. The present study derives, tests, and confirms a novel prediction of this account for reading aloud. Reading aloudThe currently most successful theories of how pronounceable letter strings are read aloud postulate two pathways for translating print into sound (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001;Perry, Ziegler, & Zorzi, 2007 Mem Cogn (2011) 39:1332-1347 For instance, in Coltheart and colleagues' dual-route cascaded (DRC) model, the nonlexical pathway (pathway B in Fig. 1) assembles a phonological code, using grapheme-to-phoneme rules (e.g., 'th' → /T/). This pathway generates a correct pronunciation for regular words (e.g., hint) and nonwords (e.g., zint) but regularizes exception words (e.g., pint is read so as to rhyme with hint). The lexi...

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Section: A Response Criterion Accountmentioning

confidence: 80%

Reading aloud: New evidence for contextual control over the breadth of lexical activation

Reynolds

Besner

Coltheart³

2011

Mem Cogn

Self Cite

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“…However, it has been shown that the phonology of words also has a considerable impact on visual word recognition. For instance, Yates, Locker, and Simpson (2004) showed that phonological neighborhood influenced visual word perception (see also Mulatti, Reynolds, & Besner, 2006). In a visual lexical decision task, participants responded more rapidly and accurately to words with larger phonological neighborhoods than to those with smaller neighborhoods.…”

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confidence: 99%

Phonology and orthography in reading aloud

Schiller

2007

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

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460Visual word recognition comprises the processes involved in identifying a word-for instance, during reading (see, e.g., Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001). One important theoretical issue in visual word recognition concerns the role of phonology (see Frost, 1998, for a review). In principle, the orthographic representation could be enough to recognize visually presented words. However, it has been shown that the phonology of words also has a considerable impact on visual word recognition. For instance, Yates, Locker, and Simpson (2004) showed that phonological neighborhood influenced visual word perception (see also Mulatti, Reynolds, & Besner, 2006). In a visual lexical decision task, participants responded more rapidly and accurately to words with larger phonological neighborhoods than to those with smaller neighborhoods. Presumably, words with many phonological neighbors lead to a stronger pattern of activation at the phonological level than words with fewer neighbors. This activation pattern is an indication for the word recognition system that a letter string is a word, thus allowing faster responses. Yates et al. (2004) concluded that their results demonstrate the importance of phonological codes when processing letter strings. Yates (2005) replicated these findings using the naming and semantic categorization tasks.Similarly, Perfetti, Bell, and Delaney (1988)-using a backward visual masking procedure-demonstrated a higher target word (e.g., phase) identification accuracy when the backward mask was homophonic with the target (e.g., fayze) than when it was a graphemic mask (e.g., farne) or a control mask (e.g., compt). Perfetti et al. (1988) suggested that phonological information of words is quickly activated during reading and assists visual word identification in an early stage. This early role of phonology in visual word recognition was supported by another study of Perfetti and Bell (1991) showing that phonological priming effects reflect phonemic activation of the target words within 45 msec of prime exposure duration. Ferrand and Grainger (1992, 1993 extended these results in a systematic time course study of visual word recognition using masked priming. They demonstrated orthographic priming effects with prime exposure durations as short as 17 msec in lexical decision. Phonological priming started to emerge around 50 msec, which corresponds to the results reported by Perfetti and colleagues that were mentioned previously. Grainger (1992, 1993) developed an interactive activation model of word recognition in which orthographic information is fed directly into the lexicon and into phonological representations. These phonological representations can also feed into the lexicon (word level). However, phonological priming effects are mediated by orthographic representations. Therefore, this model predicts that effects of pseudohomophone primes (e.g., mert) that have orthographic overlap with a target (e.g., mere) should appear earlier than the effects of pseudohomophones with less ...

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“…There has been some debate as to the nature of neighborhood density effects, because both density measures are usually strongly correlated (e.g., Mulatti, Reynolds, & Besner, 2006). Mulatti and colleagues argued that phonological neighborhood density, but not orthographic neighborhood density, affects naming performance.…”

Section: Interaction Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Filling the gaps: A speeded word fragment completion megastudy

et al. 2015

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In the speeded word fragment completion task, participants have to complete fragments such as tom_to as quickly and accurately as possible. Previous work has shown that this paradigm can successfully capture subtle priming effects (Heyman, De Deyne, Hutchison, & Storms Behavior Research Methods, 47, 580-606, 2015). In addition, it has several advantages over the widely used lexical decision task. That is, the speeded word fragment completion task is more efficient, more engaging, and easier. Given its potential, we conducted a study to gather speeded word fragment completion norms. The goal of this megastudy was twofold. On the one hand, it provides a rich database of over 8,000 stimuli, which can, for instance, be used in future research to equate stimuli on baseline response times. On the other hand, the aim was to gain insight into the underlying processes of the speeded word fragment completion task. To this end, item-level regression and mixed-effects analyses were performed on the response latencies using 23 predictor variables. Since all items were selected from the Dutch Lexicon Project (Keuleers, Diependaele, & Brysbaert Frontiers in Psychology, 1, 174, 2010), we ran the same analyses on lexical decision latencies to compare the two tasks. Overall, the results revealed many similarities, but also some remarkable differences, which are discussed. We propose that both tasks are complementary when examining visual word recognition. The article ends with a discussion of potential process models of the speeded word fragment completion task.Keywords Speeded word fragment completion task . Lexical decision task . Visual word recognitionIn the last decade, the field of visual word recognition has seen a surge in so-called megastudies (see Balota, Yap, Hutchison, & Cortese, 2012, for an overview). Generally speaking, a typical megastudy comprises several thousand items for which lexical decision, naming, and/or word identification responses are collected. The rationale behind megastudies is that they complement (traditional) factorial studies in which stimuli are selected on the basis of specific lexical or semantic characteristics. That is, factorial studies require one to experimentally control for a number of variables that could potentially obscure the effect(s) of interest. Megastudies, on the other hand, aim to gather data for as many stimuli as possible, without many constraints. The idea is that one can then statistically control for confounding variables by conducting a multiple regression analysis. In addition, continuous variables such as word frequency need not be divided into distinct categories (i.e., high-frequency vs. low-frequency words). This is a critical advantage of the megastudy approach, because artificially dichotomizing continuous variables has been shown to reduce power and increase the probability of Type I errors (Maxwell & Delaney, 1993).In the present study we sought to build on this work, and we describe a megastudy involving the speeded word Electronic supplementary ma...

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Neighborhood effects in reading aloud: New findings and new challenges for computational models.

Cited by 45 publications

References 36 publications

Reading aloud: New evidence for contextual control over the breadth of lexical activation

Reading aloud: New evidence for contextual control over the breadth of lexical activation

Phonology and orthography in reading aloud

Filling the gaps: A speeded word fragment completion megastudy

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